A reminder that as the US continues to threaten countries around the world, fedposting is to be very much avoided (even with qualifiers like “in Minecraft”) and comments containing it will be removed.

Image is of Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi (below) and Iranian Speaker of Parliament Ghalibaf (above, right) in the Iranian parliament in 2024. These two figures have played a major role in the war so far.

My summary of the situation as I understand it is in spoiler tags below.

summary

After many long weeks, Iran and the US have agreed that they’re going to begin negotiations on certain topics in a process lasting at least 60 days. Due to America’s perfidy during previous negotiations, trust has broken down so far that Iran demanded $12 billion of their frozen funds and several other promises, such as the end to the naval blockade, to even return to the table, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. Iran also demanded that negotiations take place in two stages, and that nuclear issues will only be discussed in the second stage, which will be several weeks from now if everything goes as planned.

The terms of the MoU have themselves been a big source of confusion and suspicion, for me and many other pro-Iranian spectators. Getting the wording exactly correct is important, because the US really is like the devil - leave room for any possible interpretation in the contract that favors them more, and they’ll insist that this was the only interpretation up for discussion. Additionally, the US might be historically bad at winning wars, but they’re very, very good at winning peaces: they set up the post-WW2 order to best suit them by playing the European powers off each other; the DPRK might have survived the Korean War politically intact but existed for nearly the next hundred years as a sanctioned pariah; Vietnam was soon forced to economically engage with the country that had dropped triple of all the bomb tonnage of WW2 on them; and so on. It is no exaggeration when I say that the negotiation phase will be the most dangerous part of this war and it could lead to the most death and destruction without a single missile impacting Iran.

However, there’s one little genocidal colony in the region that could stop this whole process from even beginning, as the US appears to have promised Iran that the Zionists will stop the war against Lebanon (and perhaps Gaza too? I’m a little unclear) and even withdraw entirely from southern Lebanon, including all bases set up since this broader conflict began. Apparently, the US promised this in return for Iran not striking the Zionists in return for their most recent strike on Beirut on June 14th. Now, the issue with this whole situation is that the US greenlit the Zionist strike on Beirut, and they knew that Iran would respond to it because they did in response to an earlier strike. If the US made such major concessions to Iran in return for this response strike not occurring, then why authorize the Beirut strike at all? Why make their position worse? Right now, I can think of two reasons. First is that they attempted to create one final embarrassment for Iran, under the assumption that Iran was so desperate for a deal that they wouldn’t risk responding. Second is that this is all one big ruse or misdirection; the US does not intend to follow through with the MoU and subsequent negotiations anyway, and so the terms they’re “agreeing” to don’t really matter.

With the MoU signing apparently set for June 19th, we’ll know for sure soon.

Last week’s thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

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The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine

If you have evidence of Zionist crimes and atrocities that you wish to preserve, there is a thread here in which to do so.

Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:

UNRWA reports on the Zionists’ destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.

English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.

Mirrors of Telegram channels that have been erased by Zionist censorship.

Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Sources:

Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:

Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

  • Tervell [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    3 hours ago

    Other countries like African AES, Cuba, Venezuela, do not have the necessary choke point and/or ability to exercise control of it and/or ability to withstand strategic US air campaign AND impose a too high to be acceptable cost for a ground invasion. … They can still crush Cuba, they can still probably roll over and destroy the AES states in Africa or put them in a hurt, they’ve effectively seized control of Venezuela’s oil for the near future.

    I would definitely agree about the vulnerability of Latin American countries, but not necessarily about Africa, at least not to the same extent. The other thing the war has shown is the vulnerability of US bases - the US already has a much less dense network of bases in Africa (especially with the French kicked out, so they also have less allied bases to borrow, plus the US itself withdrawing from Niger): https://www.africom.mil/document/36567/us-africa-command-2026-posture-statement

    Key Challenge: Eroding Access and Basing

    USAFRICOM’s crisis response hinges on assured access to the continent. However, as our access diminishes, we find ourselves increasingly unable to respond effectively to the growing number of crises. Since the tragic events in Benghazi, Libya, we have been given clear guidance to ensure timely responses to protect U.S. personnel and facilities. This includes security augmentation and, when necessary, military-assisted departures. USAFRICOM is tasked with safeguarding 17 High-Risk/High-Threat diplomatic posts across Africa, while the rest of the world manages the other 15 posts combined.

    And these bases have nowhere near the same concentration of air defense assets (with most of those being in the Middle East and East/Southeast Asia). African countries certainly won’t be able to build up missile and drone forces anywhere near on the level of Iran, but they would also have way less targets that they’d need to actually strike, and way less defenses that they’d need to defeat. So, if the US is kicked from its African bases by force (or at least the ones in range of whichever country they’re trying to hit), they would then be forced to:

    1. rely on flying from carriers near those countries shores - except, as we’ve seen from the Iran war, the US just barely managed to activate 3 carriers, with it having extended the deployment of one of them several times (which will incur its own maintenance costs, and knock that carrier out of the game for repairs for way longer than initially planned, something which will also have knock-on effects on other ships), and had to stay some distance away due to the threat of being hit, which limits sortie generation rate, since planes have to spend more time flying to and from their targets

    2. rely on flying from further-away bases with extensive aerial refueling - except the tanker aircraft fleet is also struggling. And at certain distances, even if you have the tankers, you just run up against the limits of the human body for the guys piloting the fighters. Only strategic bombers can manage such super-long-distance missions, since they have the facilities and spare crew members to allow some sleeping - but their readiness rates are also fucked!

    3. rely on flying from further-away bases, plus long-range munitions, so somewhat less strain on the tanker fleet as the planes won’t need to fly as far - except they’ve just expended a whole bunch of those munitions on Iran, already putting a massive dent in what was supposed to be earmarked for China

    The NATO campaign against Libya could be carried out because there were plenty of European bases around the Mediterranean, but as you get further south, the capability to sustain a campaign decreases. The US could probably manage at least some semblance of a bombardment campaign, but will struggle to maintain it for long, and with the caveat that it’s going to eat up resources meant for China.

    And as for trying a ground invasion - the deployments of large concentrations of troops are subject to the same base vulnerabilities, especially given that the lack of bases means the US will have to actually build up the necessary infrastructure as they invade - all the while being harassed by drones. And they don’t even necessarily have the spare manpower for something like this, given all their deployments elsewhere. So again, this would require redirecting resources meant for China - the US could get away with the '91 Gulf War because the Soviet Union was on its way out, so the US was just coming out of the Cold War with a massive amount of troops and resources that it was free to focus on Iraq without having to worry about weakening itself elsewhere. By the '03 Iraq war, the scale of the deployment was already much smaller, and their capacity has only gotten worse since.

    Russia is still bogged down in a proxy war initiated by the US and its Euro-vassals 4 years later

    The bogging down extends both ways - the war has also consumed a substantial amount of Western equipment and munitions. If a couple more countries get bogged down in such wars against the West, NATO militaries are going to practically dissolve into dust.